Beware That Killer Cacti.

Apparently, when I was a kid I must not have taken the warning of Nickelodeon's Hey Dude's intro; "Beware of the man-eating jack rabbits and that killer cacti." Although my wife Cambra and I never encountered man-eating Jack Rabbits, we did adventure out to find us some cacti which did not strike fear in our hearts.

My mother-in-law took us a few blocks from their home in Arizona to look at some cool looking cacti that resembled a harmless bush. While driving she told us a story about how my father-in-law had dared my sister-in-law to sit on the cactus, my obedient sis followed her patriarch and sat on the cactus resulting in a hilarious situation for everyone that was there... minus her.

After chuckling off the story Cambra and I, with the thought that we were too smart to mess around with cacti, headed towards the cacti patch with camera in hand. One would think we were trying to catch a cheetah on the run the way we rushed out of the car to get a picture. My baggy-pant-wearing wife was the first to head to the patch, which consisted of about 40 or so of these cacti-bushes. I caught up to her and we both arrived at the patch at the same time, I then lead the way through a narrow passage way between a few of the bushes. With the story of my sister-in-law in our heads, we stepped wearily through the bushes. After I got through I turned around to see Cambra biting her tongue and being in what was visibly a state of discomfort. Instead of writing another 100 words to describe what had happened I'll show you a picture.


The sight of my wife in visible pain caused me to go into Knight-in-Shining-Armor Mode. I sat there for a good 30 seconds surveying the situation weighing each option with the possible outcome, this process led me to the conclusion that I should try to grab it and pull it off... it didn't work and my finger stung for a few hours. After my ceremonial "ouch," which I use to celebrate pain, I decided to pull on Cambra's pants to separate the cactus from her leg. Judging from her reaction when I was tugging it must have hurt; however, once the pieces of cactus were separated I then stomped on them downward until the cactus was off of her pants.

Once this buff-handsome-knight rescued the princess from the killer cacti, we headed back to the car to share with the matriarch that we had a knew cactus story for the family. What's the moral? Listen to the television when they're teaching you about cactus safety. Thank you Nickelodeon, I apologize for my insubordination.

Since I believe in equality, here's my wife's side of the story:

As awesome a blogger as you are Mike-my-love you do have some misinforming statements. Firstly, I went throught the cactus patch first where my pants caught the cactus. You forgot to mention also that they weren't just stuck to my pants but had razored directly through and had about 4 or 5 barbed spikes stuck in my leg. These particular spikes (as Jaron informed us) begin to curl once inside flesh to insure they arent shaken off by animals...or uncareful people. Lastly .. I was the one who thought of pulling my pants away from my leg in a quick motion to make sure no more pokeage happend to either of us. Then once it was off you stepped on it and it jabbed into your shoe, making you victim number two.
love you :)Cambra